Guildford City Council: Local govt cost management in action

The age of austerity has seen public sector organisations explore avenues to make cost efficiencies without losing service levels; the phrase “doing more with less” has quickly become the slogan of the post-recession age.

Talk of increased levels of outsourcing, off-shoring, and shared services, emanate from across the sector from central government down to local government, as organisations between to embrace ICT as an enabler to traverse the rocky path ahead.

PublicTechnology.net this week spoke with Steve White, head of revenue and payment services at Guildford City Council, about the blurred lines between ICT and cost management now and in the future. Despite the difficult times facing local government, White’s pragmatism is refreshing. As a veteran of the public sector through the recessions of the late 1970s and early 1990s, White says certainly in the case of Guildford “We’ve got many tools and techniques to do that [tackle cost efficiencies] including being able to delve down into our spending data”.

Guildford is one of the vanguard councils using the spotlightonspend web platform, which launched earlier in the summer to help authorities publish and compare spend from £500 and up. The system comes into effect ahead of the January 2011 ‘Payment for Government’ requirements on data transparency. It’s one area that’s particularly close to White; he explains Guildford’s participation is part of a wider desire for the council to get ahead of the “transparency agenda”. The Council wanted to ensure data was open and available to its residents, otherwise “We’d have had to have done something Heath Robinson-ish,” explains White referencing the illustrator and his drawings of overly complex imaginary contraptions.

“[The way this has progressed] is more evolution than revolution. To the outside world it might seem revolutionary to put your spending data online, but I think it’s more involved and organic,” White adds. “If the public are interested they can have a look and suggest where we might want to save in the future.”

Revolutionary or not, the implementation of data transparency means another perhaps unforeseen area of savings will emerge. “One of the things we’re hoping it may do is keep down the number of Freedom of Information requests, because councils get a lot of them asking about spending. We can point them in the direction of the spend analysis website and tell them the information is all there,” says White.

“That will be a big bonus and we will save public money because we won’t be spending hours and hours trawling through the data ourselves.”

White talks about the perception of the cuts on public services, especially on local government. Bullishly he calls for local government “certainly those of us trying to embrace [the challenge]” to receive a “pat on the back”.

“All too often the public sector has been criticised, but at the same time we’re trying to run along with the cuts agenda with some innovative thinking. What will actually happen is a lot of local government will respond to the agenda pretty well, and we’ll find the public services are pretty responsive to these kinds of demands.”

White is also bullish about the perception that public sector organisations don’t turn to cutting edge technology. “I don’t think we can be accused of not using cutting edge technologies,” he argues. “Some of my colleagues across the country have done far more than us.”

“Look at Bracknell and their use of smart card technology. That is a significant use of technology for linking up citizens and services; we were one of the first to put council tax balances securely online – and we did that in 2001/02.”

White continues, “Something we’re working on at the moment across Surrey is the Tell Us One initiative, a DWP-sponsored programme already trialled in Kent and other authorities. Surrey authorities have just had approval to join this.”

“Basically it is a great service for people registering births and deaths, who will be given an option of registering the death to central and local government services the deceased partner may be receiving – like the DVLA, and the Passport Office – in one. We will have that in February [2011].”

He adds, “That is a significant cutting edge development that we’re rolling out.”

White concedes that local authorities cannot rely purely on technology for a step change, as the implementation in some instances would exceed the three-year spending cycles councils have to adhere to and plan for. “There may have to be other areas of transformation which won’t necessarily include technology; there’ll be other projects that will see things like the sharing of services and partnering.”

“It’s a mixed economy [of solutions], and each council will have its own strategy. That’s the challenge for local government,” White adds before pragmatically adding, “There are some big opportunities to grasp. Maybe the hope is we’ll do something so significant that it’ll change the way local government looks for the future – and it’ll be a really good thing, and not all doom and gloom.”